Category Archives: Barrel Aged

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After four long years, it’s time to blend and package my first Woxbic beer.
I struggled quite a bit on the blending ratio. Too many variables to take
into account: the volume of beer I could produce to replace what goes into the
blend, the number and size of the barrels I already have, the volume to package,
and ultimately, how the blend would taste.

Transferring Year 1 Woxbic from barrel into a keg

In order to ensure I did have some of year 2 blend left, I needed to limit the
total volume I packaged. The result was that I was going to have quite a bit of
year 3 left over and that I’d need a new barrel to fill for going forward since
I was not also ready to package what would be left in year 3 barrel. Eventually
I settled on a 60/30/10 of Year1/Year2/Year3 ratio, similar to what Jester King
did with their recently released lambic-inspired, Méthode Gueuze beers. I
packaged approximately 10 gallons of blended beer. That works out direclty to 1
gallon of three year old, three gallons of two year and six gallons of one year.

Year 3 and Year 2 barrels transferring into keg for blending.

Year two and year one blends will remain in-barrel (without a top off) for next
year’s blend, and year 3 will have 9 gallons left to package separately. I’m
planning on blending that with some fruits for a cuvee style release as well.

For the actual transfer of the beer, I was excited to use a constructed barrel
transfer tool fashioned after the industry tools, like a Bulldog or
Rack-It-Teer, this was put together by some homebrewers on Milk-the-Funk
community.

The transfers from barrel to keg went flawlessly. A bit of CO2 to push and the
beer flowed quickly into the keg. After collecting all of the volumes, each was
pushed via CO2 into the Chronical where it was recirculated with some bottling
sugar.

Recirculating the blend in the Chronical

Bottling with the Last Straw was nice. The ergonomics of holding the Last Straw
are very nice in comparision to the Blichmann Beergun. I do wish the Last Straw
had a larger diameter for beer. It was designed for already carbonated beer, so
I can understand why the line is small. But for uncarbonated beer, it would be
nice to fill faster.

The weight of the line let the bottle fit itself slowly; that was handy for a single person operation.

With the bottling complete, I now have 6 to 9 months to wait to see how the beer
changes in the bottle. I’ll post some pictures and tasting notes later this
year.

It’s Texas winter time again; well sort of. Texas has the strangest winters; it was 85F on December 25th, and then had a high of 28F for 3 days in early January. Today is 72F. Despite these wild swings in temperatures, it’s time again to brew my annual Lambic-style, or Methode Gueuze, as the newly introduced mark for a process has been released alongside a huge accomplishment from Jester King when they released SPON late last year. Note, I won’t be performing a turbid mash. Yet.

In preparation for my first year of blending, I’m doing my largest single batch. 22 Gallons of wort to be split between a 15 gallon Rye Whiskey barrel, and a 5 gallon Whiskey barrel. The 15 gallon barrel will get a fresh pitch of ECY 20, my favorite blend for long barrel aging lambic-style beers. The 5 gallon will get wild yeast I captured under a peach tree from my yard. I brewed a 1L starter a year ago which produced Belgian-like characteristics by not much in the way of sour. After aging for nearly 9 months, the pH dropped from 4.2 to 2.8. Slow bugs work magic. I just refreshed this mixed culture to pitch into the 5 gallon barrel to see how that turns out.

These two barrels are the newest in my collection and need to be parafin waxed. Using Gulf wax in a glass bowl, heat gun set at 1000F and a thermal glove one can drip and blend hot wax on the whole barrel (outside and both heads) in about 20 to 30 minutes. I’ve done this for all 3 of my Woxbic barrels and it’s done amazingly well at keeping any acetic character out of even the 3 year old beer which has been stored at approx 75F for the entire time.

After this brewday, the next big challenge is blending the 3, 2 and 1 year old blends, and then how to plan for next years’ blends. I find it incredibly difficult to determine how to keep a consistent amount of 3, 2 and 1 year old lambic beer around considering the blending ratios may change. One can always brew more each year but it becomes challenge to use up the remaining beer that’s beyond the 3 year mark. I plan to take what I need out of the 3 year old barrel and anything that remains will get bottled as straight unblended lambic-style; sort of a Grand Cru or Cuvee. Maybe I’ll blend with fruits as well.

Smoking malt for a batch of Russian Imperial Stout turned out quite well. With that success complete and now kegged, I’m happy to proceed with more smoked malts! One of my favorite smoked beers is Jester King’s Gotlandsdrika. The recipe has been shared by owner/brewer Jeff Stuffings over at the Beer and Wine Journal.

Despite the cracks in the wood, the barrel is water tight.

I took this recipe and scaled it up for 15 gallons so I can fill my newly acquired Rye Whiskey barrel. This time, I’m smoking 100% of the malts used. I also decided to keep them under the smoke a bit longer to help keep the smoke present post-fermentation.

The recipe calls for using beech and birch woods. I had access to beech wood chips but no birch. Instead I picked up some Alderwood to smoke half of the pilsner malt. The whiskey barrel is a bit aged, dumped in 2015. It tested well with the swelling and holding water however, I was some what concerned about what might have found its way into the wood since it sat dry for so long. Barrel steaming to the rescue.

Another year and another Woxbic! This year I was quite a bit late. Normally I’m brewing this batch during January or early February since there aren’t that many days which have cool enough weather for fermentation in the garage in the mid 50s. But better that than not at all. Also with the “magic” of science, I happen to have a shed in which I can keep things at just the right temp, ~55F.

I’m really excited about these lambic-style beers and the fact that the previous two batches are tasting really well! My favorite local brewery, Jester King has just blended their first batch of lambic-style spontaneously fermented beer. I’m about a year away from being able to blend and bottle as well. When brewing for blends, one needs to have enough younger beer to spread out the older beer. So this year, I finally was able to get two barrels.

This brewday I filled the first barrel, another 11 gallon rum barrel. I’ve picked up an additional barrel, 15 gallon Rye Whiskey. After a quick batch of smoked saison, I’ll pick up this recipe and put 15 gallons of Woxbic in it as well.

Initial cleaning and swelling of the 15 gallon Rye Whiskey barrel.

Recipe-wise, no real changes. I was unable to pickup local Pilsner from Blacklands Malt due to their success. They only offer their pilsner malt under contract; and all available bags are being picked up by other local breweries. I was able to procure some Weyerman Bohemian Pilsner malt from a local brewery Adelberts, so a big thanks to them.

We’ve got a number of beers planned for the future and all of them include using sour, aged beer and blending with fruits. In order to have enough of this base beer, we need to brew and age quite a bit. To get started, we’re brewing up 13 gallons, max for the current system and get things aging while we wait for the various fruit seasons to occur.

Nothing special here, just my take on the base beer that Jester King uses for their fruited sours. Enjoy!